This past 4th of July weekend the TRG Koni challenge team was at Watkin’s Glen in upstate New York. Peter and I both very much like Watkin’s Glen and knew that our Porsche was going to be strong here.
We arrived at the track on Thursday afternoon under the rain. Even-though some teams made the call to not go out under the rain and risk damage, we thought it would be a valuable experience for both peter and I. The 2hr session started out with full rain; however, it did eventually start to dry. It never got dry enough to go to slick tires but the track did dry out considerably. During the session we were always in the top 5 and ended up in 4th overall.
Friday was a different story. The rain was gone and we focused our attention on setting up the car for peters friday afternoon qualifying session and for the saturday race. Unfortunately within a couple laps peter reported that the car was smoking and the crew realized it was a bad high pressure power steering line. The work required to fix this issue included taking the motor and transmission out of the car. The crew once again worked extremely hard as they only had 2 hours to take the motor and transmission out put the new power-steering line in the car and then put the motor and trans back in. Once again the crew came through and had the car ready for Peter to qualify. Peter was at a bit of a disadvantage because he never got a chance to drive the car in the dry before qualifying. However, he managed to find a nice gap and ended up 14th with a time of 2.07.6.
On Saturday we had a final practice and the race in the evening. I still had not been in the car since the Thursday rain session and needed at least a couple laps to learn at least the brake points and the proper gears. However, when It was my turn to get in the car there was a big wreak which lead to me never getting a lap. At this point I was frustrated due to the fact that I had not had one lap in the dry and I was about to jump in the car in the middle of a 2hr 30min race with guys who are already up to speed. During the race we stretched Peters stint to almost the 1hr 20min mark. Our car along with 4 others took a unique strategy call. We took a gamble and wanted it to stay green for the last hour and as a result the others would have to pit for gas while we would just stay out and gain positions as a result. During my stint I worked my way from 50th overall to as high as 17th until a crash caused a full course yellow to come up. This bunched up the pack and was not what we wanted for strategy. On the restart our porsches just get eaten up by the more powerful bmw’s and mustangs and as result a bmw that restarted directly behind me made a late move on the inside of turn 1 and contacted me and an ST car. The contact was bad enough to cut both of my front tires and I would have to loose a lap and pit to fix the car.
I have some good in-car video of my run, the contact, and the revenge. If you would like a copy of it please email me your address at Scott510@gmail.com and I will send you a copy on DVD.
-scott
